Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.
- 96
- 3
What is this place?
This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a
court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to
optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.
The weekly Culture War threads host the most
controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are
appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy;
if in doubt, post!
Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts.
You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.
Why are you called The Motte?
A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently,
it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey",
originally identified by
philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial
but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens
this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for
the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired
propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."
On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.
New post guidelines
If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it.
A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts
such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a
submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).
Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or
significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.
If in doubt, please post it!
Rules
- Courtesy
- Content
- Engagement
- When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
- Proactively provide evidence in proportion to how partisan and inflammatory your claim might be.
- Accept temporary bans as a time-out, and don't attempt to rejoin the conversation until it's lifted.
- Don't attempt to build consensus or enforce ideological conformity.
- Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
- The Wildcard Rule
- The Metarule
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
I've found every Discord server I was ever on to be, ultimately, disappointing. The whole format seems to promote shouting over each other, trying to one-up whoever came before, attention whoring and showmanship. It's broadly the opposite of how I like to communicate. That Discord is mostly populated by young leftist Americans doesn't help either.
In other words, I guess I'm too old for Discord.
Discord is more like a platform than it is a single community / vibe. Probably a majority of discord servers, unweighted by member count, are just places for small communities or groups of friends to chat about whatever they were going to chat about anyway. And for that, it's the best platform on the internet. But yeah, almost all public discord servers (and, i guess, the private ones) are terrible because, well, the people populating them are mediocre, and would make any platform they used 'like that'.
The private rooms are all eventually destroyed by bad moderators.
Actually, that's true of a lot of the public ones too.
I've almost never seen that happen to private servers tbh. Sometimes to public ones
Perhaps I'm just unlucky, but it's happened enough to me that I've completely burnt out.
It's a shame, too; the signal-to-noise ratio of some of those places was quite high, but when the person who's supposed to be running the instance is either completely absent or part of the problem, there's nothing to stop the most interesting members from saying "fuck this, I'm out" and disappearing (if they're not just getting banned).
(Personally, if they're still talking, I think they just went back to 4chan- most of the conversational benefits of Discord, but none of the technological niceties- or one of the Discord-like platforms if it's related to a topic Discord hinders discussion of.)
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link